Sonic Boom is an entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise developed concurrently with the Sonic Boom TV series. It was released for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS and carries the subtitles Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal respectively.

Serving as a prequel to the stories revealed in the TV series, the Sonic Boom video game delivers a totally different experience to previous Sonic games with collaborative gameplay at its core. Developed in the U.S by California-based Big Red Button Entertainment (Wii U) and Sanzaru Games (Nintendo 3DS) in collaboration with Sonic Team, this is the third title to be released as part of an exclusive deal with Nintendo. Sonic Boom takes advantage of the innovative hardware of both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, with traditional elements of Sonic games, such as speed, also featured. The video game also introduces exploration, combat and an Enerbeam tether mechanic. It also features a main hub and missions branching off that.

Something to note is Sega has clarified that Sonic Boom will not reboot the franchise, nor is it taking the place of the mainline canon of Sonic games. There are more than the four playable characters returning and the Chaos Emeralds are absent. Amy is playable in the Wii U version, while Sticks is playable in the 3DS version.

The games were released in the US on November 11, 2014.

The games contain examples of

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Both Games

Alternate Continuity: SEGA has confirmed that the show and the game are the beginning of a "sub-franchise", which are entirely different from the main games.

Adaptational Badass: Amy is much more capable than she is in the regular series. For a split second in the trailer when the heroes fall in a hole, everyone but her fell on their face. She could be badass in the main series as well, but she seems much more so in this series.

Adaptational Villainy: Shadow is, in these games, at least less nice, and is much less rational about his decisions, attacking Sonic purely to "prove friendship is weakness." It's not as massive as some other ones though.

Canon Foreigner: Sticks the Jungle Badger is introduced, along with a whole slew of characters who live in a village that Sonic and his friends are out to protect from Lyric and his robot army.

Continuity Snarl: The games were meant to be prequels leading up to the cartoon, but there wasn't much done with this concept at all. More particularly, the 3DS game and its bundled comic pretty much act independently from the Wii U game in terms of Lyric, creating a weird error of continuity difference between the titles.

Rise of Lyric has multiple gameplay styles in the Wii U version. One is an automated speed-based style somewhat reminiscent of Sonic Unleashed and its ilk. Another is a more traditional platforming style with Beat 'em Up elements, reminiscent of Sonic Heroes. Emphasis is placed on cooperative gameplay, even in single player mode- the CPU will control the other character.

Prequel: The games, for the show. Unfortunately, this isn't executed well. Originally, the series' order was intended to be Rise of Lyric, then Shattered Crystal, and finally the show, but all entries of Sonic Boom (including the show) appear to have their own continuities (see Continuity Snarl above) thanks to having hardly any (if at all) content that links them together outside of the characters and the world.

Wicked Cultured: Toying with this trope is partly why the characters are covered in wraps, while Eggman wears a clean, almost militaristic uniform jacket. Word of God states that this is deliberate to show that the main characters aren't worried about how they look, but just do what they have to in order to help others.

Apathetic Citizens: Many of the friendly NPCs are incredibly rude towards Sonic's party and don't like being approached when they're (apparently) very busy with something. Later in the game, they'll finally start asking for their help but then go back to giving them the cold shoulder when the request is complete. However, some of the citizens have dialogue (which may or may not be activated during any given playthrough) that implies that the NPCs aren't friendly to Sonic and the gang because they're aware that Sonic is the reason that Lyric is free again after centuries of imprisonment.

Big Bad: Lyric, who is a member of an ancient, snake-like race and wields Powered Armor, will be the main antagonist of the games.

Big Bad Duumvirate: Lyric and Eggman team up partway into the game. Their alliance doesn't last.

Big Red Button: An actual subweapon in the game; it obliterates any enemy around the user after a warmup period. Only gets one use, mainly because the user literally stomps on it.

Also, literally the name of the development studio that made the game.

Captain Obvious: Sonic and his friends have to endlessly mention things that the player already knows about because either "they have short-term memory loss" or "they think the player has short-term memory loss".

Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Shadow. About halfway through Rise of Lyric, he challenges Sonic to a boss fight over "friendship vs isolation" issues. This boss fight isn't even tied into the main plot and he's more or less forgotten afterward.

Guide Dang It: The game rarely ever informs you on what you need to do to make progress on the islands, making it really easy to get lost.

How We Got Here: The game starts with Sonic being blasted by Lyric's forces, falling down a pit and being covered by rocks as his friends watch. The game then flashes back some time before then to show how that situation came about.

Amy wants to know what MAIA wants with Sonic, but MAIA states that it is classified. One "Come on!" later, and MAIA submits to peer pressure.

MAIA asks to know where Sonic is; Knuckles asks her how they know they can trust her enough to tell her that Sonic and Tails are a few levels down. Amy punches Knuckles in the arm after MAIA leaves. (See Dumb Muscle)

Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Lyric has the gang cornered and surrounded by robots. He demands they turn over the crystals, or he'll kill Sonic. When Amy does, Lyric tells his bots to shoot Sonic anyway. They all blast him and bury him under debris. After Lyric leaves, the gang digs through the rubble, and find Sonic okay. Despite being only a few feet away from him, Lyric's robots seem to have aimed at the ground around Sonic, instead of actually at Sonic.

Ironic Echo: When Lyric is first released, he tells Sonic that they have unfinished business. When Sonic travels into the past and Lyric demands to know who he is, Sonic says that they have unfinished business. Sonic said it because Lyric said it to him, but presumably, Lyric said it because Sonic said it to him, so...

Irony: It's hard to say if Tails is referring to a collapsed structure or the game itself with this one line.

Tails: It's not that bad. We can fix it, right?

Keep Away: During one water segment, Sonic and Knuckles toss a crystal to each other to keep it away from Eggman and Lyric.

Kill All Humans: Lyric wants to destroy all organic life and replace it with robots, piece by piece.

Life Meter: Rise of Lyric uses rings as this, with the severity of the blow determining the number of rings dropped per hit. Upgrading your Ring limit requires Shattered Crystal.

Lull Destruction: In Rise of Lyric, the characters will spout lines of dialogue for every single thing they do. Even jumping on bounce pads has several lines associated with it. It would be impressive if the lines were more interesting and less "I love bounce pads!"

MacGuffin: In the game, Sonic and friends travel across the island in search of 9 Chaos Crystals so that they can prevent Lyric from unleashing his army of robots.

Hippo: I've been think'n ya know... this Lyric business is like a tornado takin' on a dingy. Makes a sailor think about the important things in life...

Amy: ...like your friends...

Tails: ...and your family...

Sonic: ...and Chili Dogs!

Never Trust a Trailer: The earlier trailers for the game look spectacular. The actual gameplay footage is not so good.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sonic opens a door of a temple letting Tails, Knuckles, and Amy inside to escape from Metal Sonic and the other robots, but this leads to the release of Lyric. They aren't happy about this. Amy in particular tries to stop him, twice, before Metal Sonic showed up.

For those who don't want to (or are unable to) watch the videos, it's being compared to Sonic '06 in terms of being broken due to a massive amount of glitches (including being able to skip to the third to final level) found on day one.

Out-of-Character Moment: While probably not intended, Sonic is bizarrely malicious when trapping Lyric in his prison for a thousand years.

The Power of Friendship: Was stated to be what Sonic, thanks to his loner status, learns as a part of his Character Development, however in the final game the times where you could call Sonic a loner are few and far between. Despite that, this trope is still utilized throughout the game, as everyone works together to put a stop to Lyric (Shadow even comments that he thinks Sonic relying on his friends is a sign of weakness, only changing his mind on it when he sees Sonic and his team had beaten Lyric at the end of the game).

Pre-Order Bonus: Luminous TRON-esque outfits if pre-ordered from Amazon, and a figure of Sonic with the Ancients' Crystal if pre-ordered from Game Stop.

Scenery Porn: The Wii U version runs on Cry Engine 3 (the same engine that powered the Crysis games). Initial reveals looked gorgeous because of it, but the final results weren't up to that level, making people wonder if something went wrong.

Three-Point Landing: In the initial reveal, Amy does this while Sonic and Tails land on their faces and Knuckles lands on his back when they fall down a chasm.

Time Travel: MAIA facilitates this so Sonic and Tails can get the Crystal Map in the past. This leads to a Stable Time Loop due to their encounter with Lyric.

Ungrateful Bastards: Tails, Amy and Knuckles act like this when Sonic unwittingly leads them to Lyric's prison and free him. As Sonic frequently mentions however, he didn't have a choice, they were surrounded by Eggman's bots lead by Metal Sonic. Good fighters or not, there was no way they were getting out of that unscathed. What's more, how was Sonic to know Lyric was being kept in the temple? To be fair to the others, Sonic made no effort to join them up front when the robots started arriving en masse.

Villainous Rescue: Eggman saves the group at the end when Lyric once more uses the energy rope on them.

Villain Team-Up: Eggman eventually "partners" with Lyric to try and get the map to the crystals back. But as usual it's an uneasy alliance. Lyric eventually breaks off and takes command of Metal Sonic in the process.

Vitriolic Best Buds: Sonic and Knuckles as usual. However, what's interesting is that in this particular universe, it's Sonic who acts like the loner who's reluctant to accept help, and Knuckles is more of a Nice Guy.

What Happened to the Mouse?: At the end, Lyric is just tied up and left on the ground without any hint as to what happens next, possibly consigned to a Fate Worse Than Death depending on whether or not Sonic's Enerbeam module runs out of power.note This was probably meant to lead into Shattered Crystal (see Prequel above), but there's nothing in that game that references the events of Rise of Lyric.

Shadow gets knocked into a time portal after his fight with Sonic, whereupon Present!MAIA states that he was knocked into her future. Said future is at the end of the game.

Shattered Crystal

All There in the Manual: The game includes the Archie drawn comic which shows how Lyric was imprisoned, Shadow's somewhat grudge against both Lyric and Sonic and how Amy wound up fighting Lyric at the start in the first place.

A Rare Sentence: When Sticks warns the group that they're about to crash, Sonic says "Sticks is right", then adds that he never thought he'd say that.

Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: At the end of Shattered Crystal, Shadow shows up and makes short work of Lyric's "ultimate" machine before kicking him out of an airlock for good measure.

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